Why Design Thinking Should Be At The Core Of Your Business Strategy Development

A primary element of design thinking is simply thinking and ideating on a solution to address a problem or better meet a customer need. Establishing the proper amount of time for truly thinking through the work being done and measuring its merit as a viable solution to solve the challenge at hand is shockingly and overwhelmingly missed a lot of times.

So how can you implement design thinking in your company? Let’s discuss some of the basics.

Center on the customer; shake well

"Of course we know our customer! In fact, we know our customer better than they know themselves!" Really? Then great! You are halfway there. But unlike most businesses, don't fall in to this pitfall of 'thinking' that you know your customer simply because you are an expert!

Customer-centric is the main word here. When you get them in a room, you may be shocked at how unaware certain functional groups are of the goings-on outside of their own function.

This can make or break your business - but find out exactly how you can lead your industry in truly knowing your customer.

Identify and define the problem to form solutions around

Define the right problem to solve. It’s the assembled team’s job to always question the problem at hand and empathise, in a multitude of ways, with the person’s experience they seek to improve. Try to represent in a visual way the problem or scenario you need solutions developed around. We are visual creatures and the more you can “paint the picture” the better off you’ll be at forming viable and valuable solutions.

Create many options for the newly defined problem

Design thinking helps you go about things differently—not solving a problem the same way every time. It’s important that many solutions be ideated no matter what the problem at hand is. Extract ideas from everyone’s mind, but be careful not to overanalyse the thoughts and ideas at the outset.

Fine-tune selected directions

Once you have a few good options, they need to be embraced by the group. Don’t let things like what’s happened in the past deter your from pursuing a good idea. Design thinking creates an environment that lets new ideas grow and lets the group experiment without the threat of making mistakes. Sometimes options will need to be combined, refined, etc. Several rounds may be needed to make sure the right answers are being brought forward to solve the problem.

Pick the winner and execute

This final stage is where a course of action is selected and resources are allocated to achieve goals.

I will detail 14 x executable (simple) strategies that you can start doing right now (assuming the execution is done well of course!). Keep in mind this is not a fully instructional piece on design thinking.

With the guided and evidence-based design thinking approach, I have been able to assist over 50 x start-ups, small businesses and entrepreneurs grow and (in some cases) double their business revenue and scale, simply by working closely with the leaders and decision makers. There is a huge potential to every business and the key lies in identifying and designing a specific strategy(s) to fit your unique skill sets and brand.

Tune-in and find out how and why design thinking should be at the core of your business strategy development.

Target Audience

Prerequisites for Attendees

Attendees should understand the values of Design Thinking (Empathy, Collaboration and Experimentation). Design Thinking is embedded into the practice and approach of almost every single leading brand in the world and Fortune 500 brands.